May 22, 2006

[Tech] Updated does not really mean updated

Now what the heck am I talking about? Well, I found a wee problem with the Atom <updated> tag, it's not what it seems. The following is what I tried to change to get an entry to highlight itself when its contents have been modified.

Tried modifiying this in <feed>:

Indicates the last time the feed was modified in a significant way.

And then this in <entry>:

ndicates the last time the entry was modified in a significant way. This value need not change after a typo is fixed, only after a substantial modification. Generally, different entries in a feed will have different updated timestamps.

Well, I needed to have an entry that I have in a feed I have subscribed to, to be highlighted in my reader of choice, which is NetNewsWire (and other readers such as SharpReader, Tristana and FeedDemon), whenever <updated> timestamp has been updated. I thought it was the seconds that was throwing it off, well, I got a second opinion. Yes, Mick had a look for me, and found that does not indeed do what it says. So my only way of getting individual entries highlighted by whatever readers that are used is to update the individual's <id> tag. I know, it's not correct, and defeats the purpose of having an <updated> tag. But for now, this cannot be handled by most readers out there.

Posted by whykay at May 22, 2006 11:31 PM